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i.e. it is essentially a .ini file, organized into different sections. If you ever wanted to retrieve these "Favourites" to show in your application you would need to open this file, and interrogate it for the relevant information. Thankfully, there are some PInvoke calls that can be used to make this task a little easier. This CodeBank submission aims to show how you can enumerate all your Internet Explorer Favourites and display them in your application, as well as how you can add new ones.

Internet Explorer Favourite

An Internet Explorer Favourite is essentially a file on your file system, with a .url extension. The name of the file, without the extenion, is used as the label for the Favourite within Internet Explorer, and the URL, contained within the file, is what is used to navigate to that Favourite. There are additional items in the .url file, including the icon to use for the shortcut, but these will not be discussed in this thread.

PInvoke Calls

Two PInvokes are going to be used to get/set the information that we need.

The first is GetPrivateProfileString, you can find information about this here:

All Internet Explorer Favourites are stored in the current users Favourites folder. An easy way to get to this folder is to use:

Code:

Environment.GetFolderPath(Environment.SpecialFolder.Favorites)

With that in mind, the following code can be used to get all of the Favourites (including Favourites contained within nested folders) and put them into a TreeView (assuming you have a TreeView on your form called:

With these two methods defined, it is a simple matter of calling GetFavourites on the Load Event of your form.

Due to the fact that there could literally be hundreds of Favourites stored on the user's machine, in various different nested folders, I have decided to only display the Favourites when required, rather than waste time loading them when they aren't needed. To that end, I have used the BeforeExpand event of the TreeView to decide whether or not I have to go and find some more Favourites for the currently selected Node.

To add a favourite, it's a simple call to the other PInvoke call, WritePrivateProfileString, providing the information for the new path to the Favourites file, as well as the Url that you want to save with it. Here is an example:

Which just showed the Organize Favourites box. People were happy, so I was happy

Could have used the DoOrganizeFavDlg API as well.

There was a time, long, long a go when a guy named Hannes du Preez ( Hey! That's me!! ) knew anything and everything concerning programming technologies. Since, he has had a burn-out, got married and had kids ( and puppies - do not forget the puppies ), and our friend Hannes has turned grey, almost bald, and most importantly, his belly grew substantially! He also experienced problems with his hands.
Now, Hannes said to himself: "Learn new things! If you do not learn new things and accept the changes in technology, you will become stuck in the same gear!"
So, our friend, Hannes ( the unsung hero - once ) has stumbled upon the awesomeness which is mobile programming, Android, BlackBerry and Windows Phone 8. Thus far, he has done good - he even has a bunch of articles on them - with the hopes that maybe one day, he'll find his dream job.
Besides trying to program PCs., AVR devices, and mobile devices he likes writing poetry, short stories, novels, songs, and tries his hand at art; even though his wife is a far better painter and sculptor... Moral of the story: Forgive him for not always getting it right, he is after all just human, and he has accepted his faults; but, at least he is trying! Perhaps if he would think asked questions properly through, he'd get all his answers right... Forgive him as well for being grumpy at times, as his neuro-pathways are still a bit scrambled... VB.NET MVP 2008 - Present